So What If Adolf Hitler Was Accepted By The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna...?

[SteyrAUG]

What if Reinhard Heydrich had not be expelled from the Navy because he broke his engagement to Lina Olsten (who had relatives in senior navy command) and discharged in 1931 for "conduct unbecoming to an officer and gentleman"? Ironically he actually married her in Dec of the same year.

Certainly there still would have been a nazi party and certainly they would have played on popular resentment of the Treaty of Versailles, but could they have achieved the same successes in the Reichstag without Hitler who was busy becoming a world famous artist?

If the nazis still managed to achieve popular support could there have been a final solution if Heydrich was just a high ranking officer in the German Navy? Was Goering, Himmler or Goebbels capable of stepping into the breach and accomplishing anything meaningful?

Would the other threat, the German Communist Party have accomplished anything more meaningful than driving Germany's economic challenges to unrecoverable depths?

Would Stalinist Russia have dreamed of world conquest or would they have been content to sit behind their expanded borders and live at the expense of "the people"?

With no Germans and Italians bent on world domination to occupy the military, production capacity and the ire of the western world would Japans expansion policy have been quite as aggressive?

What a different century it might have been if one man became an artist and another fulfilled his dream of a successful navy career. Did millions really die because a vindictive girl dealt with broken promises by ending a mans military career? Did almost the whole of Europe get invaded because Hitler drew buildings well enough but had difficulty with the human form? Would Picasso have also been passed over for admission to The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

[Mozart]

This kinda alternate timeline speculation has always tripped me out. Really makes you think.

I once saw a commercial where a guy leaves his apartment and drops his keys, has to bend over and pick them up. He later accidentally runs into a woman on the sidewalk, and helps her up. Then it shows them on a date, getting married, raising kids, siting at kids college grad, etc.

Then it goes back to the beginning and he doesn’t drop his keys. And later he’s walking on that same sidewalk but he’s 2 paces further down, and they don’t run into each other. And they never have that life together.

That. Trips. Me. Out.

It makes you curious as to what you could’ve been. If you were mostly destined to be something close to what you currently are, or if there’s an alternate universe where there’s a vastly different “you” walking around.

[uffdaphil]

Alternate history can always be written in either direction. A more savvy technocrat and tactician than Hitler may have divvied up the old world with Stalin and Tojo, being careful to give the US no cause to declare war. What if that dictator channeled German discontent into earlier weapons research instead of anti-semitism? Would jets and better missles by 1940 and not betraying the soviets made for a short WW2? After the Axis powers (including the USSR) consolidated their gains would the US be able to withstand invasion on multiple fronts having never gotten industry on a war footing?

Would the century have been better with fewer deaths in a relatively short time and the entire first world being enslaved?

[flenna]

What if the U.S. defeated fascism in WW2 and communism in the Cold War and then 30 years later a blatant fascist/communist gets the Democratic presidential nomination and a chance at taking the White House? These hypotheticals are sometimes unimaginable.

[Arik]

I think, as adults, people are what they are whether a tree hugging hippie or a raging fascist. Very few people do a 180. It's where they're at in their life that matters. Had Adulf become a painter, content with his life, he would probably still be a anti Semite just one that disliked but tolerated Jews, Gypsies and other "undesirables".

Stalin would have probably still tried to spread communism, probably by force. But not having Europe ravaged by war, not having a battle hardened military and without the power vacuum in eastern Europe he probably wouldn't get far. Maybe some small proxy conflicts.



What a different century it might have been if one man became an artist.

Another way to look at it is ....where would the US, and the rest of the world be economically if it wasn't for the war? Hitler singlehandedly brought the US out of the great depression, not to mention his own country prior to the war. At the time the majority of the US was still in the 19th century. The war brought jobs, construction, science...etc ..etc.. Would there have been a 50s? Would it have been later? Or none at all? Or just a shadow of what it was?


Also, what would the middle East look like today? Without a sudden high influx of European Jews migrating to Palestine


Gotta give him credit. A wanna be artist changed the geopolitical and economic landscape of the entire world, in about a decade. And it still matters today

[MegademiC]

Yeah- i had an incident that caused me to change jobs, and meet my wife.

If one person wasnt there, or reacted differently, id have not met her. Weird stuff to think about.

[Sry0fcr]

Wife and I watched Inside the SS and I posed the same question to her RE Hitler & art school since she's an artist this weekend. Strange...

[Business_Casual]

Hitler’s drivers were centered around hygiene. His mustache was meant to convey a sense that he was concerned with such matters and that unkempt or unruly things disgusted him. Same, sad to say, about race. Hygiene in those matters drove him, so would he been famous, reduce that drive? I can’t say but I’d speculate it would only have increased his access to notoriety.

[SomeOtherGuy]

What if the Treaty of Versailles had followed the American position, rather than the ultra-punitive French and UK position? Post-WW1 Germany would have been less poor and more stable, the Nazis never would have gained power and no one would have heard of "Hitler." Seriously.

[armtx77]

What if the Treaty of Versailles had followed the American position, rather than the ultra-punitive French and UK position? Post-WW1 Germany would have been less poor and more stable, the Nazis never would have gained power and no one would have heard of "Hitler." Seriously.

Funny they wanted Germany to pay every penny of WW1, BUT challenge them on tariffs and they shit themselves on how bad 'Merica and the Orange Man is.

[Arik]

Funny they wanted Germany to pay every penny of WW1, BUT challenge them on tariffs and they shit themselves on how bad 'Merica and the Orange Man is.Difference in 100 years. WW1 1917, Trump 2016. People who lived 100 years ago wanted Germany to pay. People who live today... Orange man bad

[yoni]

I don't think the premise of the thread is correct. Hitler or someone like him was the logical outcome of the
Treaty of Versailles.

Which should be a lesson, for today.

Sanctions against Iran, when a large potion of the population is tired of the status quo is a great strategy. It will result in a free Iran, if we stay the course.

However go to war with Iran, and have Iran fight the USA to a stand still. Then during the treaty steal Iran blind, it will come back and haunt you. Just as it came back to haunt us in Germany.

Now if Hitler, were to have been accepted to art school, would that have avoided WW2, maybe.

The war would have been different, but the German people were beaten down economically by the Treaty of Versailles. I think it would have been closer to WW1, with out the USSR. I think the Germans main target would have been Western Europe. As such it might have turned out as just one more European war in a long list of wars in western Europe.

Regarding the Jewish question, Israel still would have been born, 100%. The Soviets had more to do with early mass immigration. If we look at the same time frame we see many country shaking off colonial powers that was a trend that lasted for about 20 years. So maybe instead of Statehood for Israel in 1948, maybe sometime in the 1950's.

But thinking about it, if the USSR had not lost so many people in WW2 would they have still taken over Eastern Europe, absolutely. I also think if we didn't have WW2, the USA would be minor power today rather than the number 1 country in the world.

[Mozart]

Would there still have been a moon landing? Would Wernher Von Braun have had the funding he needed to advance rocket tech? Operation Paperclip wouldn’t have been a thing, so Von Braun coming to the US maybe doesn’t happen. So did we ever get to the moon? Or even into orbit for that matter?

[SteyrAUG]

Would there still have been a moon landing? Would Wernher Von Braun have had the funding he needed to advance rocket tech? Operation Paperclip wouldn’t have been a thing, so Von Braun coming to the US maybe doesn’t happen. So did we ever get to the moon? Or even into orbit for that matter?

Von Brauns goal from the beginning was to go to the moon. But if Hitler didn't fund his trial and error phase and the US didn't grab him and a bunch of other scientists from German weapon projects that is a seriously big What if. Another is obviously did we develop atomic weapons.

Would avoiding World War II simply have relocated an eventual conflict between the US / Western powers and Russian and their communist backed forces which would have been called World War II?

[The_War_Wagon]

If 7 of 9 hadn't been jilted by her husband, would WE have been stuck with the OBAMANATION for 8 years? :fie:

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

What if Snowden and Tim McVeigh had made it into the Rangers...

The plus/minus on Hitler is would the rise of German nationalism been so anti-Jewish as to lead to the Holocaust. If instead of Hitler, you get another Bismarck. Probably not the Holocaust, and a different war strategy, maybe. To me the real hinge is Churchill. I think with out him, Britain would have folded. Then, if you don’t have Churchill and Hitler, you get a one front war against the Russians, without outside support. Russia probably loses that war.

[Diamondback]

What if Snowden and Tim McVeigh had made it into the Rangers...

The plus/minus on Hitler is would the rise of German nationalism been so anti-Jewish as to lead to the Holocaust. If instead of Hitler, you get another Bismarck. Probably not the Holocaust, and a different war strategy, maybe. To me the real hinge is Churchill. I think with out him, Britain would have folded. Then, if you don’t have Churchill and Hitler, you get a one front war against the Russians, without outside support. Russia probably loses that war.

Or you get "Bismarck 2.0" and Churchill and they cobble together a proto-NATO when Stalin sends his jackboots marching West. There was actually an interesting exploration in Strategy & Tactics Quarterly last year of Stalin's war plans for WWIII, which we can assume would have been Alternate WWII if Hitler hadn't called down Dogpile On Germany first.

Let's say we take Hitler off the board. Let's further say Lenin or Trotsky smart up and whack Stalin before he can take power. How does that change the chessboard?

[Business_Casual]

Or you get "Bismarck 2.0" and Churchill and they cobble together a proto-NATO when Stalin sends his jackboots marching West. There was actually an interesting exploration in Strategy & Tactics Quarterly last year of Stalin's war plans for WWIII, which we can assume would have been Alternate WWII if Hitler hadn't called down Dogpile On Germany first.

Let's say we take Hitler off the board. Let's further say Lenin or Trotsky smart up and whack Stalin before he can take power. How does that change the chessboard?

Communism is international socialism, so another dictator would have filled the gap and pressed the West.